Software Engineer, API Agents

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 266,000 - 445,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an experienced backend software engineer to build the core systems behind the next generation of agents. You will design reliable services and abstractions to help agents find context, use tools, retain knowledge, coordinate long-running workflows, and operate safely.

This is a hands-on role spanning backend and infrastructure with opportunities to work across runtimes, orchestration, search, and observability.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional backend engineering experience.
• Exceptional backend fundamentals and track record of leading complex systems.
• Ability to move across service, platform, and product boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the shared agent harness and backend infrastructure powering long-running workflows.
• Build reusable capabilities across search, context, memory, tool execution, delegation, and orchestration.
• Establish secure execution environments, identity and permissions, observability, reliability, and cost/latency efficiency.
• Partner with Research, Codex, infrastructure, and product teams to translate model progress into shared capabilities.

Skills

Python

Go

Rust

TypeScript

Job description

About The Team

API Agents builds the shared agent harness, tools, and infrastructure that turn OpenAI's frontier models into systems that can reliably complete real work. We carry the capabilities behind Codex into a much broader set of products and workflows across software engineering, research, finance, healthcare, enterprise operations, and more. Our work spans search and connected context, computer use, memory, delegation and multi-agent coordination, and safe execution. Sitting at the intersection of Research, Codex, infrastructure, and applied product teams, we build reusable agent capabilities that compound across the ecosystem.

About The Team

API Agents builds the shared agent harness, tools, and infrastructure that turn OpenAI's frontier models into systems that can reliably complete real work. We carry the capabilities behind Codex into a much broader set of products and workflows across software engineering, research, finance, healthcare, enterprise operations, and more. Our work spans search and connected context, computer use, memory, delegation and multi-agent coordination, and safe execution. Sitting at the intersection of Research, Codex, infrastructure, and applied product teams, we build reusable agent capabilities that compound across the ecosystem.

About The Role

We are looking for an experienced backend software engineer to build the core systems behind the next generation of agents. You will design reliable services and abstractions that help agents find the right context, use tools and computers, retain knowledge, coordinate over long-running workflows, and take action safely. The role combines deep backend and infrastructure work with strong product judgment, with opportunities to work across agent runtimes, orchestration, search, execution environments, identity and permissions, observability, and evaluations. This is software and systems engineering rather than model training: success comes from strong backend fundamentals, high agency, and the ability to turn fast-moving research capabilities into dependable production primitives.

In This Role, You Will

• Design, build, and operate the shared agent harness and backend infrastructure that power long-running, high-value workflows across OpenAI and third-party products.
• Build reusable capabilities across search and connected context, computer use, memory, tool execution, delegation, subagents, and multi-agent orchestration.
• Establish the foundations agents need to operate safely in production, including secure execution environments, identity and permissions, observability, evaluations, reliability, and cost and latency efficiency.
• Partner with Research, Codex, infrastructure, applied product teams, and external developers to translate model progress, traces, evaluations, and real workflow needs into shared capabilities and measurable gains in task completion, cost, and latency.

Your Background Might Look Something Like

• 7+ years of professional engineering experience, excluding internships, in relevant backend, infrastructure, platform, or product-driven engineering roles.
• Exceptional backend engineering fundamentals and a track record of leading complex systems from ambiguous problem statements to reliable production services.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript, or similar, with the ability to move comfortably across service, platform, and product boundaries.
• Strong systems design and operational judgment across distributed systems, APIs, workflow orchestration, search or storage, compute and execution, identity and permissions, or observability and reliability.
• Infrastructure depth paired with product judgment: you can abstract complex systems into simple, durable primitives that other engineers and developers can build on.
• Strong developer empathy and communication skills, including experience partnering with users, research teams, and product engineers to make fast-moving capabilities useful and dependable.
• High agency and comfort operating in a fast-moving environment, with strong ownership of security, reliability, and operational excellence.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI's Affirmsive Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $266K - $445K